The present invention relates to methods and arrangements that provide digital communication links between fixed points.
In order to extend a high-bandwidth/high-data-rate communication path from its main network out to the premises of, for example, an enterprise customer or a campus containing a number of enterprise customers, a telecommunications carrier will typically lay a fiber optic cable connecting the network to the customer premises. If terrain or other considerations preclude the use of fiber, an alternative is to set up a horn-antenna-based microwave link. However, data rates as high as the so-called OC-48 rate of 2.488 Gb/s, or even the Gigabit Ethernet/OC-12 rate of 622 Mb/s—which are often required in order to meet the needs of enterprise customers—are difficult to achieve using microwave links because bandwidths that such microwave links can support are limited and rain attenuation can be high at frequencies above 10 GHz.